Settling In (revised)
by Sevenstars
Summary: Jess's first weeks at Sherman Ranch. This is a new version of a previous fic, slightly revised and extended to make it fit better with "Destiny."


**Settling In**

 _by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: How does a drifter learn how to live settled? Jess's first weeks at Sherman Ranch, coming between "Stage Stop" and "Glory Road." Beta by Katy.

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"All right, deal me in," Jess agreed. "We'll play a hand or two and see how it works out."

"Yeah, but don't deal any off the bottom," Jonesy warned. "C'mon, Andy, if we got four to feed I need some more potatoes peeled."

The boy turned and accompanied him back toward the house without a trace of unwillingness. The two men led their horses over to the barn and turned to stripping the gear off them. "This time of year," Slim said, "we keep most of the household stock up in this pasture, close to home, and let them feed all day. Maybe a dozen saddle horses, the buckboard pair, Jonesy's dairy cows, the stage-line teams. Alamo here—" he patted the chestnut's shoulder— "he lives in the barn or the corral next to it, so we'll have at least one horse up to bring them in with when they're needed. Usually Andy's Chaps—he's the mahogany bay—stays with him, for when I'm out on the range. You can put yours with them, or turn him out, whichever you'd rather."

"Might be best he goes in the pasture," Jess decided. "He's like me, used to the Big Open. Anyhow, he'll need time to make friends with yours."

Slim nodded quick agreement. Horses, he knew, have very strong likes and dislikes for their own kind, and while great friendships are often struck up among them, any new one in a bunch is an outcast in the community until he begins to make friends with one or two of the original members. Jess would want to avoid making the other horses feel crowded by introducing his own in tight quarters, and he'd expect his bay to suffer a few kicks and bites at first, but he'd also know that only by risking just such treatment would the animal have any chance of ever making a place for himself.

"You can leave your saddle on the corral rails, if you'd rather," Slim went on. "There are weighted tarps close by to put over them at night or if a storm starts to blow up, to keep off the dew and the rain. Or there are sawhorses inside to throw them on. Bridles usually hang on pegs just inside the barn door. Harness goes inside always—it's line property and costs serious money; I'll show you where tomorrow."

"Good to know," said Jess. Then, with one eyebrow canted curiously: "How come you call him Alamo? That's a Texas name."

"My pa and one of my uncles spent some time in Texas. Picked up a lot of stories. They both admired the men who fought there. I was raised as much on Texan history as any other kind."

Jess nodded, accepting that. Slim watched out of the corner of his eye as the Texan stripped the bay's bridle off— _How does he plan to lead him?_ —and then saw Jess twist a hand through the animal's mane and the horse follow quietly at the gentle pressure. Slim was impressed: only a horse that was really well halter-broke would lead by the mane, or follow you without a rope or even your hand on it. Jess led the bay back to the pasture gate, opened it and urged him on through. "It's okay, Trav. We'll be here a little while, anyhow. Go on," he said, and slapped the animal's flank. The horse trotted a few steps with a somewhat aimless air, paused, and looked back, then got down for a good luxurious roll before he went exploring.

"He's all right," Slim said, when Jess came back for his saddle. "Trav?"

"Traveller." Jess's expression was slightly defiant.

"Good name for a drifter's horse," Slim commented neutrally. He stripped the bridle off Alamo and turned him loose, and they heaved their saddles across their shoulders and carried them inside, where Jess slung his own into place alongside the rancher's, spread the blanket across the seat to air, hung his bridle where Slim showed him, and went back for his meager baggage, blanket roll, saddlebags, carbine. "Travel light, don't you?"

Jess shrugged. "Don't do to accumulate things. Wears your horse down. Where do I bunk?"

"Inside," said Slim, with a jerk of his head toward the house.

"With you all? Family?" Jess looked surprised and puzzled, and something else, something Slim wasn't sure he could define.

"It's a small ranch," Slim explained. "Haven't got quite seven hundred head, and almost all the perimeter's fenced. I could work them by myself most of the time, if it was all I had to do; up till recent, about the only time I'd need or hire extra help is roundup and haying season—I've got a sort of bunkhouse on the other side of the barn for that. But the stages make for a lot of extra work, cutting into time, especially when there's repair and maintenance to be done, or teams to doctor or shoe. It's getting to where I really need a second man on a permanent basis. Andy tries, but he's just not big or strong enough yet, and he's needed around here most of the time, to help Jonesy with the chores and the relays. No need to open up the bunkhouse for just one man, though."

"Reckon not." But there was an odd tentative note to Jess's voice. "You two sure don't look much alike," he added, obviously trying to change the subject.

"I take after Pa's side. The Shermans were always tall and blond. Andy, he favors our ma. I ought to warn you, I guess—we're all in one big bedroom. Andy's needed us together ever since Ma died, two years ago. He'll want you to be there too. He took to you, Jess."

"I noticed," Jess agreed quietly. "He do that kinda thing often? The way he was talkin', before you walked in on us—"

"I can imagine," Slim sighed. "He's been pulling at the reins the last year or more. Restless. Don't really know why. This is all the home he's ever known, and we do our best by him, Jonesy and me. I've never laid leather to him, Jess, in case you wondered. Pa didn't believe in that—he used to say a grown man thrashing a kid was plain bullying—and neither do I. But to answer your question—well, you've seen some of his pets; he's always had a way of picking up strays. You're just the first two-legged one." He forced a brief smile. "Probably was bound to happen, sooner or later. Come on. We need to get you set up with a bed before Jonesy calls us to supper."

"Never mess with the cook," Jess agreed, as if quoting a primary rule of life. He followed Slim across the yard and in the front door.

"Hope you don't mind taking top bunk," Slim said, as they entered the large bunkroom at the side of the house. "Andy and I are in the single beds, and Jonesy has to have the bottom—bad back, like I told Carlin."

"Don't bother me none," said Jess, eyeing the half-partition. "Good spot. Never do feel easy about not bein' able to see who might be comin' through the door. This'll do fine."

Slim frowned uncertainly, wondering, for the first time, what he'd gotten himself into. What exactly had he been thinking, to go galloping after a man he knew had a reputation as a fast gun? Some of the temporary hires he'd taken on, over the years, had probably had dubious things in their pasts, but nothing like this wiry young Texan. Why hadn't he at least asked a few background questions before he gave in to the sudden, uncharacteristic urging of intuition and invited the man back to the ranch? What did he really know about Jess? That he was cocky, irreverent, and scary-fast when he wanted to be. That he didn't seem to have much respect for the concept of private property, or at least not the sanctity of land boundaries. That he was a loner—he'd said out on the road that he "liked bein' his own boss." Would it even be possible to integrate such a man into the tight little family he and Andy and Jonesy had created here these last couple of years, drawing together to provide one another with mutual support after Ma died? Did he _want_ to? How did he know what kind of history Jess might be dragging along with him? The man might be on the run as well as on the drift. If Slim had known about Jess's reflexive fast draw on Andy, which he didn't yet, a great many things might have turned out quite differently. But for all his stiff-necked moral righteousness, his hatred of untruth, and his tendency to drive himself and everyone around him, he also had a reverence for fairness and justice. That he knew little of Jess's past and character—only reputation, which he had some cause to know could be in error—might be a knife that cut two ways. And he had made his offer, and Jess had accepted it. It wouldn't be right not to give the man a chance. He thought about that quick little surge of satisfaction he'd felt when he realized that Jess had spurred his bay in hot pursuit of him, tacitly agreeing, even before he said the words out by the pasture gate, that he was willing to "take that chance." It was a feeling Slim wasn't familiar with, but he had liked it.

"Jonesy keeps his stuff in that chiffonier, two top drawers," he said. "Andy and I have one out here, so you might as well take the bottom ones."

"Likely won't need but one," said Jess casually. "Ain't got only one full change of clothes and a couple extra pair of socks." And Slim frowned again, but this time it was puzzlement. If Jess was really what his rep had him... Slim didn't have much cause to get far from his own land, but he read the papers and was on good terms with the local law, and he knew that hired guns made good money, from $50 or $100 a month for a long-term job up to as much as $10,000 for a single big commission. Surely a man who could command that sort of pay—even if he didn't earn it every month of every year—could afford at least a couple of pair of extra pants and three shirts ("Man should never have less—one on, one off, one in the wash," Pa used to say). There were at least two things that didn't make sense here: Jess's apparent poverty, and Slim's own unreasoning reaction to him.

Andy appeared at the door. "Jonesy says to wash up, grub's on," he reported.

"Thanks, Andy, tell him we'll be right there. Jess, we'll get some sheets and blankets together for you later on. Meanwhile, as long as we're here, you might as well use the extra basin and pitcher on the shelf. Soap's in between."

Jess dumped his meager baggage in the corner beside the bunkset, stripped off his gloves and jacket, and set right to with soap and water. Slim observed with approval that the man did seem to care about cleanliness, which—as the rancher knew from helping drive his own cattle to market—wasn't an easy matter on the trail. He washed his face and neck, rolled up his sleeves to soap his forearms, did his hands thoroughly. They were well cared for, Slim noticed, uncalloused, nails trimmed carefully short, palms almost as soft as a girl's. He tossed the man a towel and didn't miss the speed and deftness with which Jess caught it. Contradictions. Jess was full of them. Slim knew that asking personal questions was impolite, but he had a kid brother and an old friend to protect, not to speak of his land, his stock, his buildings. He'd have to, somehow, make some opportunity to get answers.

Jonesy had made something of a festive treat for supper, perhaps to celebrate the fact that they'd all lived through the last six hours or so. There were cold cuts and fried potatoes, cold tongue, breaded tomatoes, stewed canned corn, baked beans with onions and breadcrumbs in them, hot golden-hued biscuits with fresh butter and quince jelly. He had even broken out the last of the canned oysters and made individual hot oyster patties. There was plenty of coffee and a one-crust custard pie. Jess seemed slightly overwhelmed by all this food, but not to the point that he didn't eat his share and more. Slim also caught him eyeing the dishes with an odd thoughtful expression. But all he said was: "This is mighty good. You all eat like this every day around here?"

"Do my best," Jonesy replied, clearly pleased by the compliment. "Now look, that pie won't keep 'less we put it in the icehouse, so finish it up."

"Icehouse?" Jess echoed in surprise.

"Yeah, Pa built it," Slim told him. "It's dug into that high slope behind the corral. You remember where I found you? We cut ice on that lake, winters."

"And maybe one of these days," Jonesy added, "we'll be able to buy one of them home iceboxes, so we don't have to run across the yard every time we want somethin' cold."

"Trouble is," Slim explained to Jess, "the one he wants costs thirty dollars, and that doesn't count the freight; we'd have to order it special."

"Told you before," Jonesy reminded him, "if you want to put a month of my wages against it, I don't mind. What do I got to spend my money on besides tobacco and new socks, anyhow?"

"I'm not taking your wages, Jonesy." It was an old bone of contention between them. "You're saving to get yourself a piano, and you deserve one. Should've had it long since. Would have, maybe, if you hadn't stayed on with us."

"A piano?" Jess echoed in surprise. "Honest?"

"Jonesy used to play in a theater in Independence, winters," Slim explained. "Summers he was a trail cook, but when the season ended he'd go back and live with a brother of his, and that was how he paid his share."

"Can't read a note," the old man admitted, with a smirk, "but you hum or sing me any song you know and I can give you an accompaniment, maybe even a melody line."

Jess whistled softly. "How 'bout that, now. Hope I get to hear you some time."

"Slim?" Andy put in tentatively. "You haven't said yet... what about those outlaws?" He looked a bit uneasy; he knew his brother preferred not to talk about the more violent facts of frontier life, at least not in his presence.

"Carlin's in jail," Slim told him. "And three of his men won't be causing any more trouble for anybody. A posse from town caught up with us and took 'em in charge. Said there were likely some more of 'em around, but if they don't hear from their boss in a few days they'll probably leave the country fast enough. Carlin was the brains. Without him, the whole outfit will fall apart."

"Kinda like takin' down the chief of an Indian war party," Jess agreed unexpectedly. "Most of 'em form around some leader that's known to've been lucky in the past and makes up his mind to go out again. He gets killed, most often that throws the rest of 'em into confusion and full-scale retreat—they reckon gettin' dead is about as bad as your luck can get, and in a case like that they figure the spirits've abandoned him, and through him the rest of 'em."

"Gee," said Andy softly, "you know about Indians too, Jess?"

"Did a little hitch in th'Army, Andy, and rode dispatch for the Cavalry up north," Jess told him. "You pick things up quick enough, if you want to survive."

The admiration in the boy's eyes was unmistakable. "What else have you done?"

"Oh, pretty much everythin', one time or another. Broke broncs, rode shotgun on stages, pushed cows, hunted mustangs." Slim noted the way Jess's eyes flicked toward him, as if to estimate whether he was accepting it. "And drifted, like you know. Reckon I never stuck in one place more'n three, four months, and even that was 'cause it was winter and bad travellin'."

"And you never had a partner all that time?" Andy pressed.

"Andy," Slim cautioned. "You know better than to ask questions like that of a stranger."

"But Jess isn't a stranger, not any more," the boy protested. "He lives here now. He's part of our outfit."

"All the same," Slim began.

"All right, you two," Jonesy interrupted. "Got to get this table cleared off and the dishes done."

Jess tilted his head, looking quizzically at Slim. "Sounds like we're bein' told to clear out."

"We are," Slim agreed. "It's a nice evening. I think I'll sit out on the porch and let my food settle."

He wasn't sure whether Jess would take the hint, but Jess did. Slim had been waiting only about ten minutes when his new ranchhand came out of the house, wearing his jacket again. "It's not cold," he said.

"Not to _you,_ maybe," Jess responded. "I'm from Texas. This thing you call spring—it don't hardly get this cold in Texas in full winter, 'less a blue norther hits." He fished in his shirt pocket for tobacco and papers. "You mind?"

"No, not out here."

Jess began sifting Bull Durham into a creased paper. "That mean you'd sooner I didn't do it in the house?"

"I can't exactly forbid you to," Slim answered slowly. "Jonesy smokes his pipe in there all the time. It's just that... cigarettes... I don't like Andy seeing 'em."

"Take it you don't indulge," Jess guessed.

"No. Never got the habit. Pa liked a good cigar every so often, but that was all."

Jess shrugged. "Don't do it all that much myself. Been tryin' to quit here lately anyhow. Too short on cash to be wastin' it." His fingers moved deftly as he smoothed his smoke into a firm roll, scratched a match on the nearest post, and lit up. They were both silent for a minute or two as Jess drew smoke slowly into his lungs and as slowly let it out, the unmistakable manner of someone trying to milk every possible bit of enjoyment from the process.

"You was sayin' your ma died?" he ventured presently, his gaze fixed on the corral across the yard.

Slim sighed. "Two years this last January, it was. Pa—come November it'll be seven he's been gone."

Jess's command of arithmetic was elementary at best, but it wasn't hard for him to figure out that—depending on when his birthday was—Andy would have been only five or six at the time. A bad age to lose a father—not that any age was good, but a boy around then was just getting old enough to really identify with a man, to see himself as one day becoming one, to want to learn how to do man's work. Jess reckoned Slim was a little older than himself, though that might partly be his serious expression and the responsibility he bore for his brother, for Jonesy, for the land and the stock and the stage-line franchise. Either way, he'd have been maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, twenty-one—too young to have to assume the burden of head of the household, to take over raising a kid he was, just maybe, barely old enough to have fathered.

It explained a lot of things.

"You had this place long?" he asked.

"Only since Pa died. He started it, back before the war—'58, it was, that we came here. Left it to me and Andy together."

"But you got to be boss."

"Yeah. Andy wasn't quite six; somebody had to be legal guardian till he got older."

Jess nodded. "How old is he now?"

"Twelve. Thirteen come December."

 _Just about what I figured,_ Jess thought, unaware that the reflectored lantern mounted on the wall beside the door barely illuminated a quick, painful flicker of emotion crossing his lean, angular face. "About that thing with the cards," he began abruptly. "I wanted you to know. I don't cheat 'less somebody else cheats on me first. It's just... it's like I told you before. If a man's gonna play cards, he best know both the ways to do it—the right way and the crooked way. So's if somebody does try to run somethin' on him, he'll know. So's even if he don't call the other feller on it, or turn it back on him like I can, he'll at least know to get out before he can get skinned."

Slim considered. "I think I can see the point of that," he agreed after a minute. "But Andy doesn't play cards—not poker, anyway. Cribbage with Jonesy, sometimes fish or rummy or pitch with me."

"Come a time, maybe, he won't be livin' here no more," Jess pointed out solemnly. "Said yourself how restless he was gettin'. Man never knows what's around the next bend of the road. Best to be ready for whatever it is, if he can." There was a hollow note in his voice.

"You a gambler?" Slim inquired casually, fishing obliquely for information.

"Sometimes," said Jess. "That's what fetched me up this way. Andy and Jonesy know this, no reason you shouldn't... one of Carlin's boys, the one he come here to spring, was a feller I used to ride with. Pete Morgan. We was in Kansas a while back, I got in a game and come out a hundred dollars to the good. Soon as he found out about it, minute my back was turned, he cracked me one over the head and took the money. Can't think why he didn't make off with my watch as well," he noted, "except it's got my initials on the case. Anyhow, I was laid up for close to a month. Been trailin' him ever since I got on my feet."

"You rode with one of Carlin's boys?" Again Slim felt that uneasy shiver of apprehension.

"Yeah." There was no anger in the tone, no defiance. "Don't know if he'd been with Carlin before, or just hooked up with him after we... parted. Didn't know there was a connection till we ended up face to face back yonder at the ridge today; heard your sheriff say somethin' about him not gettin' far, so I figured he had to be the one in jail. But I can tell you this: we didn't do anythin' that was on the wrong side of the law. You can check into that, if you want to. I'll tell you what towns we was in."

Slim hesitated. If a man was willing to have his back trail investigated, didn't that suggest he wasn't afraid of what you might discover on it? _"_ _...take that chance..."_ his own voice echoed in his mind. "I guess that's not necessary."

He heard a soft sigh. "Thanks." He got the feeling, somehow, that that wasn't a word Jess used a lot. Then: "I been on the drift a spell. Might be it'll take me some time to get used to... well... stayin' set. Thought you should know that too."

There seemed to be quite a number of fairly personal things he didn't mind having Slim know, and that awareness encouraged the rancher to speak. "All those things you said at supper, about what you've done. That was true?"

"It was true. Been other things, too. You might say I kinda... go by turns. I..." He hesitated, then swung around to face his new employer. "You saw out there, I reckon. I'm better'n most with a sixgun. Like the way you are with that rifle. Man's good at a thing, makes sense he should use it to make a livin'."

Slim exhaled slowly. _So now we're coming to it,_ he thought. _He doesn't realize I've heard about him. He wants me to know the truth. Maybe that's a good sign._ "And you've been doing that?"

"Reckon so. Had it brought up more'n once, places like yours. Mostly I end up gettin' my time handed to me. Ain't that I do anythin', exactly; it's just... lot of folks don't seem to want me around, once they know."

"So why tell me?" Slim asked mildly.

Jess hesitated again. "Don't know. Don't rightly know why I followed you back here, neither. Just... somehow... seemed the right thing to do, both times." He shook his head. "If you want me to go... I mean, what with Andy... I reckon I understand."

 _The right thing to do._ That was it, Slim realized. Inviting Jess to come back with him, offering him a job, had been the right thing to do. He still wasn't sure why, but he knew it had. "Made the offer in good faith. Don't see a reason, yet, to take it back. Not unless you start showing bad faith."

"Ain't in that habit."

"Didn't think you were." And that, too, was true. He felt, in some strange way, that he knew Jess a good deal better than was really possible, on the basis of less than twelve hours' acquaintance. Something about this cryptic, contradictory young stranger resonated with him in a way he couldn't recall ever experiencing before. What was it he'd said out on the road? _'_ _S a real future here, Jess. Finest cow country in Wyoming... This could lead to something—_

Almost like he'd been suggesting a... partnership... somewhere down the road.

Jess watched him, marveling at how inscrutable the big man's face could be. _He'd make a great poker player,_ he thought. _'Bout th'only tells he's got are his eyes and the tone of his voice. Not like Andy._ "Somebody been tryin' to use your water?" he inquired cautiously. "Seemed like you was plumb jealous of it when we met." Hastily then: "I ain't pryin'. It's just—I know a little about range troubles."

Slim took a breath, then seemed to hesitate and rethink his response. "Not… recently," he said slowly. "But Pa did have… some trouble, before he died. I guess for me, it's—well, I know a lot of these new cattlemen come up out of Texas, where they don't fence much, but where I was brought up—in Illinois—it's just what you do. It's expected. You hold title to the land you use, so you fence it, and others respect that. Sometimes I think that's part of the reason Pa decided to settle us in this part of the country; with the mountains so close, there are plenty of poles to be had, and he saw it would be easy to enclose his claimed land. We're not the only ranchers around here who do that; most of the smaller ones do… I hear it's a common thing up in the valleys of Montana, too…" He seemed to be feeling his way, trying to find the right words to clarify his attitude. Jess sympathized; he had a similar problem sometimes. He thought, too, that Slim hadn't taken the trouble, before, to really think about "why." "It does make it easier to control the stock—I guess you'd appreciate that—and to improve our breed, if I can ever get in the way of seriously doing that. As for the lake… I told you it's the only water between here and Laramie. That's not quite true—there's Horse and Schoolhouse Creeks, but they're just sources for the main stream, going down toward the Platte. Most of the other water right around here is like that—creeks and such, but they take finding, and they're not big, and we—my neighbors and I—use them for summer range. We—I—can't risk anyone moving in on any of that. It's a rich country wherever water's available, but nobody's going to defend it for me."

Jess nodded somberly. "I reckon that's true."

Slim suddenly half-turned toward him, a quizzical look on his face. "That reminds me, sort of. How did you manage to find your way to Baxter Ridge at all? You've never been through this country before, have you?"

"Shouldn't need t'ask that," Jess replied, "knowin' where I was the first time we met. I was on th'east side of your range, right? And the Ridge is to the south? Well, I come up that road that passes by the cemetery—"

"—Cemetery Road, that's right," Slim supplied.

"—So I knew where I was, _here,_ in relation to where the Ridge is, _there,"_ Jess explained, "and I've always had a feel for land. All I had t'do, t'make sure Andy wouldn't follow, was head out from here goin' west, and cut south soon as I was out of sight. You had to circle around the long way, chasin' the stagecoach."

Slim nodded thoughtfully, probably envisioning the two different routes they'd taken. "I see. That was pretty good."

Jess shrugged. "Can't take no credit for it. Just somethin' I've always been able to do, all my life—like calmin' down that horse in the yard, when I first got here. Which reminds _me,"_ he added, "I hadta go through your south fence line, take down a couple rails—didn't feel like I had time to put 'em back, if I was to get there in time. Show you where tomorrow, if you want."

He'd expected a less than sterling reaction, considering Slim's expressed attitude regarding his fences and boundaries, but the rancher only nodded again. "All right. It shouldn't take but a few minutes to fix."

"Ain't you worried some of your beef might go off over th'edge?"

"Not unless they stampede, and that's not likely," said Slim. "We can get some pretty bad thunderstorms this time of year, but most often they blow up in the late afternoon. We haven't seen sign of one yet, so at this hour I doubt we're going to."

"Okay," said Jess. "Reckon you know this country better'n I do."

They were silent for a few minutes, each integrating what he'd heard and learned. _Is this a good time?_ Jess wondered. _He don't seem to be takin' no offense at all I've told him up to now…_

"You said Andy'd been restless," he began slowly, "and I reckon I see how that's so—I mean, what he said to you, 'bout thinkin' a long time of goin'…"

Again that quiet sigh. "He never came out with it quite as bluntly as that, before. Maybe that's part why I took after you—maybe I was blaming you. Which was foolish and unfair."

 _I need to make him understand that driftin' ain't half so glamorous as he thinks it is,_ Jess told himself. _Make him see how lucky he is he'd got a home and somebody that cares enough about him to want to keep him there. Show him just how good it can be, to be "do-mesticated."_

 _But it's a trail that runs two ways. It can't be Andy doin' all the givin', even young as he is. Slim's got to come to see that he's played some part in it too._

"You wanta keep him safe, and I understand that," he said slowly, choosing his words. "It's good that you do. It's right. But he ain't gonna be twelve forever—you know? Sooner'n you think, he'll be a man grown, and have the right to choose how he wants to live his life. If you want him to stay here, to be partners with you for real, like your pa hoped for—you got to fix it so he _wants_ to stay, wants to think of this as his home, as a place where he's got value. There's two main reasons boys leave out, I reckon. One's that they're lookin' for better'n what they got where they're at—" _like Ben and Jake,_ he thought— "and th'other's that they don't feel like they belong there. They're treated rough or unfair, or don't get enough time to be on their own and figure out who they are, or they just wanta see more of this big ol' world, like Andy does. Maybe, in that case, they _need_ to go, for a while anyhow, but—" he paused, looking gravely at the taller man— "but if they come back… that depends on whether you've made 'em want to."

"He's twelve. He's old enough to help out," Slim defended himself. "Jonesy's got his bad back, plus the cooking and housekeeping to do. I can afford to pay a hand or two for a few months each year, but not on a permanent basis. I'm not sure I could even do that, if it wasn't for the injection of cash from the Overland every month."

"Sure, I get that," Jess agreed. "You ain't hardly th'only man's got to depend on his own labor and his family's. And like you say, he's old enough—time I was his age I was earnin' man's wages workin' beef. But I was doin' that 'cause I wanted to—to help my family, to pay my own way, and 'cause I was a Panhandle boy doin' what Panhandle boys do. And life ain't all work, or it shouldn't be. Even slaves used to get time off, I hear tell."

"I don't—" Slim began indignantly, and then he stopped.

"You can't force a boy—or even a girl, I reckon—to be somethin' that don't fit 'em," Jess went on doggedly, resolved to get everything said before Slim turned him off the place from sheer dignified insultedness. "You can try, and maybe you can even cram 'em into that wrong space for a spell. But not for always, or if you do it'll come out one way or another. A body's got to find their way in life. Sometimes, sure, the road takes a turn nobody was expectin'. But even then, if you find you're takin' a strange path, somethin' you never counted on, there's gotta be some part of you that wants to be there, to go where that trail's leadin' you. If that wasn't so, you'd find a way to get off it." He stopped abruptly, paused, and added quietly, "Now, if I've gone and talked myself out of a job, you say so, and I'll go."

Slim said nothing for what seemed to both of them a very long time. _This is experience talking,_ the rancher suddenly realized. _Everything he's said, from why boys leave to being on strange paths… it's all something he knows, firsthand._ He didn't know how he knew it; certainly Jess hadn't said so. Yet he was as sure of it as he was of his brand. _Why does he care so much about Andy, or about what happens between him and me?_ He saw, in a flash of insight, that he'd been wrong to think of Jess only in terms of what he'd heard about him. That was his public face, but it wasn't all of him. _And he's trusting me with something a lot of people—maybe most—have never seen. Why?_

Somehow, he wanted to know. Wanted to make sure Jess stayed around long enough for him to find out.

"I don't fire a man for telling the truth as he sees it," he said at last. "I don't know yet whether it's a truth that fits Andy and me. But I know you've given me a lot to think about."

"Reckon I have," Jess agreed neutrally. He seemed to be waiting for something.

"I'm not a man to take unnecessary chances," Slim went on slowly. "I can't afford to, not with Andy and Jonesy depending on me. You understand that."

"Yeah."

"But sometimes," he went on, "it becomes... necessary. After all, I'm in the beef business, and that's one of the biggest gambles there is."

"Sure is."

"So what I guess I'm saying," Slim concluded, "is that I'm still willing to take this chance on you, even after everything you've said—about yourself, about… about the kind of, maybe, mistakes I've been making. And I'm wondering if you're willing to take one on me. Maybe we'll both regret it. But I think we should give it a try. How about we agree to a month?"

Jess considered it. "Might help if I knew the terms."

"You do your work, no slacking or complaining, but if you think you see a better way to do something, I'll listen. I don't promise I'll take your suggestion, but I won't just brush you off. You make a few allowances for the way things are here, especially with Andy. I agree not to let your past, whatever it's been, prejudice me; I'll judge you by what you've been and done since I've known you. I agree not to ask questions or let Andy ask any; if there's something you want to tell us, fine, but it'll be your choice. I don't criticize as long as you hold up your end, and if I do, you call me on it. At the end of a month, we renegotiate, and either way you get your bed, your food, and thirty dollars. Fair enough?"

For a moment he thought Jess wasn't going to answer, and then, out of the shadow on the other side of the porch, came the almost inaudible response. _"Yeah..."_ Jess breathed.

Neither one of them had any notion of the pattern they were setting for hundreds of nights to come.

**SR**

There were times, in the first couple of weeks, when Slim had to consciously remind himself of the bargain. There were other times when he told himself that they hadn't shaken hands on it, and maybe he wasn't really obligated to keep it. Yet Jess did seem to be genuinely trying. If, as he'd said at supper that first day, he'd "never stuck in one place more'n three or four months," it had certainly taught him flexibility and the skills of adjusting to new environments—and there was no doubting, after the first few days, that he knew range work. He understood cattle and could track as well as an Indian, an ability frequently useful to a stockman. He listened attentively when Slim pointed things out about the range, and knew to keep glancing back as he rode, getting a picture of what the country he'd just passed through would look like coming back; and he never forgot a feature once he'd seen it. His changeable eyes missed little, and his almost painfully lean body concealed a wiry strength, tough endurance, and a surprising if casual grace. He was a horseman, which wasn't the same thing as a rider. Almost more important than anything else, to a boss who held a relay franchise, he knew horses and was good with them. He noticed things about them—the start of lameness or harness sores, shoes that needed replacing—and was patient with their crotchets; he could doctor them as skillfully as Jonesy could, soothe them when they were upset or skittish, form quick estimates of their individual character, and keep their idiosyncracies straight in his mind even when he didn't get to see a particular one for a week or more as it worked its way up or down the line.

True, when they were working around the headquarters, he kept going inside to see if there was coffee (which there always was, because of the stages). Jonesy appreciated this, as he did any compliment, implied or otherwise, to his culinary skills; Slim had his reservations. But even then, Jess didn't really malinger; he just took five minutes or so to rest and restore his energy—and maybe, considering how thin he was, he genuinely needed it. Out on the range, when he didn't have that opportunity, he worked steadily, pacing himself skillfully, never exhausting himself or exceeding his own limits except when there was an emergency, and the work he did was neither careless nor mediocre. He was at first a bit clumsy with the heavy "fast-hitch" stage harness, but proved to be a quick learner and soon could rig up a pair of fresh horses in fifteen minutes, which meant that he and Slim, working together, could get a four-up ready for service in about twenty, plus the time to get them out of the pasture. He had considerable skill at rough-shoeing and at caring for horses' feet, though he wasn't the smith Slim was, and he never seemed to mind being asked to chop up some wood for the stove and fireplace; he told Andy that a man who spent a lot of time alone, or nearly so, in line camps had to learn to do for himself, and that included caring for his string and keeping up his supply of fuel.

He was first surprised and then delighted by the double shower stall Slim had put up after he got home from the war, and used it with great enthusiasm when he came in filthy from a day on the range, especially when—as was often the case at this season—he'd had to unstick a bogged cow. He ate Jonesy's cooking with gusto and often complimented it, even though to Slim it sometimes seemed his appetite was on a par with a visitation of grasshoppers. Slim, like most ranchers, tried to set Sunday aside as a day to take it a little easy: he remembered Mr. Mayborn, the wagonmaster with whom he and his family had come to Wyoming, telling them that all diarists agreed that resting one day out of seven got you where you were going faster in the end, and with your stock and your people in better condition, than forging on without ever a break, and he operated on the theory that what worked for wagon trains would work for non-travellers as well. On these days, after finishing up whatever chores might need it, his hired-hand-of-the-moment would be free to go out for a hunt or loaf around patching gear and clothes, boiling out his socks and drawers, cleaning guns and boots, trimming and shoeing the feet of the horses in his string, braiding in rawhide and horsehair, scanning any reading matter that had come within reach, hunting up a king snake and a rattler so he could watch the ensuing fight, or whatever else appealed to him. Jess always took the opportunity to change his clothes skin-out and launder what he'd had on (Jonesy quietly pointed out to Slim that his once-red longjohns were faded to a washed-out pink and had been mended and patched repeatedly, and his socks were "just one doggone darn on another"). Afternoons he'd nap or play checkers, dominoes, or mumblety-peg—never again poker—with Andy, or he and the boy would go off fishing. He was also a skilled whittler, and Andy marvelled at the delicate creations he could turn out with his jackknife and a piece of soft wood.

Slim encouraged Andy to read aloud evenings from whatever newspaper or magazine might be newest in the house, or from one of their books if there were none, as part of his ongoing campaign to get his brother decently educated, and Jess always listened in quiet fascination, his eyes bright, soaking up every word like a sponge. Some hands Slim had had over time had apparently looked on Andy as something of a pest, but Jess seemed to genuinely enjoy the boy's company, and readily answered his questions about the land, the habits of animals, how to do things and why they had to be done that way; yet at the same time Slim would catch him, sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, eyeing the younger Sherman in a wistful, almost longing way, then quickly shaking his head and turning away, as if he was reminded of something that was at once a happy and a painful memory.

The rancher found, to his surprise, that the two of them fell easily into a rhythm, seeming somehow to sense, each one, the other's reactions and timing; stretching new fence or roping and throwing some full-grown beef that needed doctoring or had been missed on roundup and had to be branded, they worked together as if they'd been doing it for years. And while, a few times, Jess's temper seemed about to flare over something—Slim learned to watch for the spark in his eyes, or the cold impenetrable mask his face became, depending on the seriousness of the provocation—he always stopped before he could explode, swallowing it down as if he were consciously trying not to give Slim cause to tell him to hit the trail. He didn't complain, and once or twice he made a suggestion that Slim found good. He was unfailingly polite to any woman who might turn up aboard the stage, though mostly distantly courteous to the men, and inclined to be cautious in responding to the guards' and drivers' overtures. Slim did notice that he had a way of standing back, with the fresh teams, when a coach came in, watching to see who got off, and not approaching until Slim waved him in to help unhook the trace chains; it was as if he needed to reassure himself that there was no one aboard who might mean him ill, and the rancher remembered what they'd talked about, or perhaps rather talked around, that first night on the porch. A gunslinger would make enemies, and there would also be those who might seek him out to try him, in hopes of taking him down and assuming his reputation for themselves.

He had his little quirks, but Slim reminded himself that any man would. The rancher learned, early on, that coming up behind him without speaking or whistling or making some purposeful noise with your feet was a good way to find yourself staring into the barrel of his sixgun—which, unlike most men, he put on every morning before he left the house, even if he only meant to be staying around the buildings that day. At night, when he went to bed, he'd hang his gunbelt on the corner post of the bunkset, being careful to adjust it precisely so it would be in easy reach of his hand, and he always seemed to sleep on his left side, facing the door, or to come back to it if he moved around. And once or twice, when Slim got up in the night, he'd rouse and have the Colt out and cocked and level in less time than it would take to blink. He was also a restless sleeper, squirming around and fighting with his bedclothes, often talking in his sleep (mostly unintelligibly), occasionally waking up with a start that shook the bunk—and a few times a strangled yell that brought Slim up too. In such cases he'd sit there just under the ceiling for a few heartbeats, shaking his head and blinking, and then mumble some apology for waking his boss, roll over, and go back to sleep.

What Slim didn't like was the way he had of making it plain that he didn't always exactly approve of the way the older man was raising his brother. Not that he got pushy about it. After that first night, his objections, when he expressed them, were really pretty mild, almost tentative. He seemed to be trying hard to be polite about it. But it gravelled Slim, just the same, that this drifter without a responsibility to his name would take it upon himself to suggest, however diplomatically, that there might be better ways to go about the process.

It didn't help that the things he objected to were often the same things Jonesy did. It made Slim feel like he was being ganged up on. And because he usually felt he had to dismiss Jess's opinions, it also made him feel disloyal to Jonesy, whom he trusted implicitly and knew he could never have gotten along without, these last years.

Still, he'd made a deal, and he would hold to it.

For as long as the weather permitted—generally from about mid-April to some time in November—Jonesy liked to go into Laramie for supplies once a week, on Saturdays. That had usually meant that Slim had to stay home, because the stages still ran, and somebody had to change the teams; when he went in—"every week or so," as he'd told Jess that first day—it tended to be at mid-week, when he could leave Jonesy and Andy in charge of things at home. Jess's second Saturday on the place, he suggested that Slim go in too. "I'll stay," he said. "I don't mind. I reckon I got it down now, how to harness up."

Jonesy, unexpectedly, agreed. "You've hardly been off the place in months, 'cept when the town's half dead," he told Slim. "You know your pa wanted it kept in the family. How d'you reckon to make that happen if you don't make time to meet yourself a girl and go courtin'? The dances've gone weekly now. You could put your best duds in a satchel and stay on after Andy and me head home."

Slim shook his head, pain curling around his heart at the memory of Abby O'Neill. It had been more than two years, and still the wound felt raw. "No, I... guess not."

"Aw, come on, Slim!" Andy pleaded. "You been promisin' we'd pick up some new books, and I don't know what to choose."

"And didn't you want to talk to Bill Bates or Reed McCaskey this year about maybe buyin' one of those young bulls of theirs?" Jonesy pursued. "You keep sayin' there's no way you can afford $250 or better for no registered Hereford, but a untried blooded two- or three-year-old at seventy-five you could maybe manage, 'specially if you can do it as a part swap. Sooner you get it done, sooner you can turn the critter out on the range and let him start doin' what the Lord made him for."

"Please, Slim!" Andy added. "You know what it said in my reader—'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'"

Jess was listening, looking as if he wanted to agree with the boy but was restraining himself because it wasn't a hired hand's place. Slim remembered what the Texan had said, that first night, and in the end decided maybe he should. After all, men with less help than he had—homesteaders who depended entirely on their own labor and that of their children—made time for family excursions to town, so why shouldn't he? Besides, he wanted to find out if there was any word on Carlin. Last he'd heard, the tumbleweed wagon had been through and picked him up to be taken to Cheyenne, where he'd go before the Federal circuit judge for some of his robberies before any of the local authorities got to take a whack at him.

At the jail he got a surprise. There was a bank draft waiting for him, five hundred dollars. "It's part of the reward that stood for Carlin, the part that was offered by the Territory of Wyoming," he was told. "Being that Cheyenne's the capital and just over the mountains, it got processed faster than I expected. Likely there'll be more coming—there was a good $5000 on him altogether, from the governor of Colorado, the U.S. Marshal's office, banks—surprised you haven't heard from the Overland, they had one too."

"I hadn't filed for this," Slim objected.

"No, but a lot of folks around here figured you deserved it," was the reply. "Carlin threatened to blow Laramie off the map if that man Morgan of his went to trial. The townsfolk got up a petition almost as soon as word got out he was in jail. Made it plain to me that I ought to send off for the bounties and be quick about it."

Slim gazed at the figures in numb astonishment. "You know what this means? I can catch up on the mortgage. I can buy that young bull I was thinking about. I can even put something aside." He struggled a moment with his own ethics. Like most Westerners, he rather despised bounty hunters. But a bounty hunter went out _looking_ for men with rewards on their heads; he hadn't. Carlin had come to _him_. It wasn't the same thing. Jonesy, who had a very practical philosophy of life, would certainly say so. Jess too, probably.

 _Jess. He deserves at least half of this. I'd never have gotten close enough to Carlin to overpower him if Jess hadn't taken two of his men down first. I've got a right to refuse it for myself, but not for him._

In the end he took it, went straight to the bank, cashed it, took $250 in twenty-dollar National Bank notes and a single gold eagle (he knew how dubious most cowhands were about greenbacks), and put a hundred against his note; he could add some more later—it wasn't really due for another month anyway. He caught Reed McCaskey coming out of the Stockmen's Palace and made a deal for the young bull, to be consummated when the next installment on the reward came in. Then he stopped by Benson's general store to pick Andy up and take him by the dry-goods store and the _Gazette_ office; the former kept a few shelves of standard and popular volumes, and the latter did a sideline in reprints of popular English works and translations of European ones. He found several new titles he thought both he and his brother would enjoy—Bret Harte's _The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches;_ John Esten Cooke's latest novel, _The Heir of Gaymount;_ Thomas Wentworth Higginson's _Army Life in a Black Regiment;_ the fourth part of _The Earthly Paradise,_ by William Morris, and his translation with Eirkir Magnusson of the _Volsunga Saga;_ the newest edition of Tennyson's _Idylls of the King;_ for the boy, Deborah Alcock's _The Spanish Brothers,_ G. A. Henty's _Out on_ _the Pampas,_ and the first few volumes of Oliver Optic's "Onward and Upward" series. He put fifty dollars on the feed bill and fifty on his account at Benson's, bought a barrel of apples and several fat bunches of early carrots for Alamo and Goliad, Chaps and Jonesy's burro, treated Andy to an assortment of penny candy and Jonesy to a supply of good Fruits and Flowers pipe tobacco, and even splurged on five pounds of winter-Nellis pears that had been in Benson's cold storage since last season.

"Some of that better go for Jess," Jonesy said, squinting.

"Half will," Slim assured him. "I've got it in my wallet, set aside for him."

"Ought to get that boy some new duds," the old man proceeded. "Those longjohns of his are 'most more patches than anything, and his socks are worse."

"It's his money. He should decide how he wants to spend it," said Slim. What he didn't say was that he felt dubious about choosing gifts for a man he scarcely knew.

"What are you gonna do with the pears, Jonesy?" Andy wanted to know, past a cheekful of tangy-sweet sour candy balls.

"Gonna bake 'em," Jonesy replied. "Fix some up for supper tonight. Say, Slim, long as we got this windfall, how 'bout some more cans of oysters? Jess sure seemed taken with them patties."

"Why not," Slim agreed. "From what I hear there'll be more of it coming; plenty yet to catch up on the mortgage. Plan on something a little special for tonight, will you?" His old friend's reference to the young Texan didn't escape him. Seemed like it wasn't only Andy who'd fallen under Jess's spell.

When they got home, Jess was waiting with an envelope that had been dropped off by the driver of the afternoon outbound, which originated at the stage-line HQ in Denver. It was stamped _Hand Deliver,_ and Slim had already guessed what was in it before he slit the flap. He was right: it was a check for another $500 of the reward. Jess was helping to get the apple barrel on the wheelbarrow—Jonesy couldn't manage the weight with his sacroiliac—and Andy was babbling happily to him about the great feed they'd be having for supper and the new books he and Slim had bought. He cocked his head to the boy's chatter, then stopped, his face going still, and dropped off the back of the buckboard to walk slowly over to where Slim stood. "Andy says you all got a surprise in town," he ventured carefully.

"We did," Slim agreed, reaching for his wallet. "And part of it is yours."

Jess stared at the little packet of notes. "I wasn't fixin' to— I mean, all I meant to do was—"

"Was what? Ask to have back what Morgan stole from you? You'll be getting that and more. We took Carlin and his men _together,_ just the way we do the work around here. You benefit from that, so you should share in this too."

Jess hesitated. "Ain't had a stake this big in... more'n a year, I reckon." He lifted his head, staring off toward the distant line of the Medicine Bows. "Might even get to California on it," he murmured. "Tried once, and the snow fell before I could get through the passes..."

"But you can't leave yet, Jess," Andy protested; he'd followed the Texan over, puzzled, when he abandoned the apple barrel. "You promised Slim you'd give it a month. Remember, you told me that? And you got to wait till the rest of the reward comes in."

The young man started, as if the words had brought him out of a dream. "Yeah," he said, his voice low and soft, "reckon that's right." He didn't say which of Andy's assertions he was agreeing with. "All right. You got someplace safe I can put this, Slim?"

It ended up with his "gunfighter's gun" in the cubbyhole Slim's father had built in the side of the living-room chimneystack, where they'd kept their cash money until Laramie got itself a bank. Slim sealed it in an envelope, wrote Jess's name across the front, and put it in the japanned cashbox left over from that time. "Next week I'll stay, and you can go in with Andy and Jonesy," he offered. "Jonesy says you need more clothes, and if you don't buy 'em yourself he's likely to do it for you, the way he does out of the household money for Andy."

Jonesy made chicken-fried steak for supper that evening, and the oyster patties he'd half-promised; he baked potatoes in their skins, scooped them out, seasoned them, mixed them with cheese sauce and repacked them in the shell. There were boiled onions with butter, and greens flavored with salt pork, and biscuits, and a very successful dessert of baked pears. "Somebody kill a chicken for me first thing tomorrow," he suggested, "and I'll smother it for Sunday dinner, but I got to start early—takes time to do the job good and proper."

Afterward, while Jonesy and Andy did the dishes, Jess joined Slim on the porch, only the fourth or fifth time he'd done that since he came; most evenings he preferred to visit with Traveller, who'd gotten into the habit of coming down to the pasture gate a couple of times a day if he hadn't been used, or just sit on the fence rails and ponder. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit up. "Ain't done this in a week," he said. "Reckon I can afford to get some tobacco, finally."

"Reckon so," Slim agreed, and wondered once again at the younger man's poverty. Bull Durham didn't cost _that_ much, only about four or five cents for the kind of two-ounce muslin sack Jess carried in his pocket, papers included. _Morgan must_ _have really cleaned him out,_ he thought. _But it still doesn't explain why, if he's what he's suggested, he didn't have enough to at least lay in a decent supply of smoking beforehand._

"There some way I can send money from town?" Jess asked.

"Depends how much you need to send," Slim replied. "Post office can make you up a money order, or if it's a lot, you can buy a draft at the bank. Either way, if it's going any distance, better make sure you send it express. That way if the stage gets stuck up, the company will make good, and you can try again."

"I got to send twenty-five dollars to the doc in Dodge City that fixed me up when Morgan busted my head," Jess explained. "And forty-three to the boardin'house that kept me and Trav them four weeks till I could get on my feet again. I promised I'd send it soon as I had it. I give my word."

"It's your money," Slim told him. "You can do whatever you want with it. You don't have to justify yourself to me."

"I know." Jess's voice was soft in the darkness. "It's just that... a lot of men I've worked for, they might'a' paid me what they'd agreed to, but somethin' like this, that I didn't count on comin'... they might'a' reckoned it was theirs. It was you took Carlin down, after all. I never laid a hand on him. I..." Long pause. "I wanted to say thanks. Again."

"I couldn't have got near enough to him to take him down, if you hadn't seen to Morgan and that other one," Slim told him. "So you had as much a part in his capture as I did. You earned it the same way you're earning that thirty dollars we talked about. A man works on this ranch, he gets what he earns, every cent. We Shermans pay what we owe." He glanced quizzically at the Texan. "That's almost seventy dollars you promised to send. Over two months' pay, apart from what you'd need for a stake, to get travelling again. If you hadn't stayed on after our bargain ran out, what were you planning to do?"

"You mean with only just thirty in my pocket?" Jess supplied. "Found me a poker game, I reckon. A crooked one for choice, so I could clean it out fair and square." His teeth flashed in a brief grin.

"Won't have to do that now," Slim observed. "You'll have twenty-five hundred coming, first to last." He paused. "If a man were to stay on... he could put that money in the bank. Six per cent interest on savings. Could even claim himself some government range; most of the land around here is cheap because it's classed as only good for grazing, you can pick it up for four bits an acre, sometimes less. File a homestead and a pre-emption first, to stake out the water sources, the way Pa did, it would run a little over $200 for a half-section, and then buy up another quarter- for as much again, he'd control as much as 5280 acres, and could take his time getting title to the rest. Two hundred head, maybe; could pick up young stockers locally for as little as three dollars a head. Or he could go into horses. Parcel that size, he could support twenty mares plus their increase for four years, till they were old enough to start selling off." Then he wondered where the words had come from.

He heard Jess's breath catch in his throat, then silence for a long minute. "Naw," he said at length. "Land... roots... that ain't for me. Never rightly figured on it."

"If people didn't try new things now and again there'd be no progress at all," Slim noted.

"All the same." Jess didn't amplify on the phrase. "Like you said before, my money. Can do what I want with it." Silence once more, then: "Somethin' I reckon I oughtta tell you..."

"Again?"

"Yeah, again. In case... well... you'll know if the time comes. It's about Andy." He drew in a long, shaky breath. "Had a brother, once, back in Texas. Last I saw him, he was just the age Andy is now. I look at Andy, sometimes, I see him."

"That explains a lot of things," Slim said quietly. "What happened to your brother? Or don't you want to say?"

"He died. Durin' the war. Cholera." Jess swallowed. "He was fifteen, but... I reckon to me he'll never get past twelve, 'cause I di'n't see him do it. You know?"

Slim nodded. "I know." His own father would always be fifty-six in his mind, the age he'd been when Slim rode off to enlist for the Union, notwithstanding Matt had lived more than two years after that.

"Just kinda thought..." Another uncertain pause. "I mean, I know you put a lot of value on the boy, and you should; I said that before. I know you ain't always plumb easy in your mind about him and me bein' friends. I just reckoned... if you knew..."

"I wouldn't mind so much?" Slim finished.

"Somethin' like that." Jess's voice was so low that the rancher could scarcely hear it, but still there was a note in it, of aching despair and loneliness, that made Slim's heart contract. Jess was right in one thing, he reflected. He hadn't had any real idea, till now, of what Andy meant to the Texan.

"I think," he said slowly— "Jess, I think I always knew, somehow, that you'd never intentionally do him any harm. You're... not like that. But I appreciate that you told me this. I think I have a little notion of what it cost you." He'd lost siblings himself—miscarriages and a stillbirth and three who hadn't made it past their second birthdays. They hadn't really been people to him, at that age, but he'd seen how it hurt his parents to lose them. He understood, now, that wistful, longing look Jess had sometimes had for Andy.

Jess swallowed again, twice, three times; Slim could hear it clearly in the evening hush. He didn't look that way; didn't want to see what he thought he would. Didn't want to shame Jess, knowing. After another long pause Jess spoke, unsteadily. "That's good," he said, and then: "Gonna go see my horse." And he pushed off the rail on which he was perching—it occurred to Slim that he had yet to sit on one of the porch chairs—and headed for the pasture fence.

**SR**

" _I was hurt bad too. And it wasn't just the money, Pete."_

That was what he'd said to Morgan, just before Morgan made him shoot.

No, it wasn't just the money, nor that crack on the head, neither, though Doc Adams in Kansas had said it could have killed him easy as not. Why was it he always had such dad-gum rotten luck choosin' friends?

" _No wonder you travel alone..."_

No, Andy had been wrong about that. He hadn't always travelled alone; fact was, he'd had a fair share of friends and trail-partners, one time and another. Stede Rhodes... Will Tibbs... Harry Kellogg, whom Roy Wade had shot in the back... Kett Darby... Christy... Billy Jacobs... the Duncan boys, well, Newt, anyhow... Mac McLane... Hal Owen... Dixie Howard. Even a couple of U.S. Marshals, Jim Tenney, Branch McGarry. It was more that, always, something had happened to break them up. Sometimes death, like Harry; sometimes other outside pressures, like Will or Dixie; sometimes just the natural progression of events, like Kett or Stede, as they quietly came to a parting of the ways.

Didn't mean he didn't know what it was to have a friend. Didn't mean he didn't long to have one who'd stick. Wasn't there somethin' in the Bible about man not bein' meant to be alone? It mostly had to do with gettin' hitched up, but it didn't have to entirely, he reckoned.

He couldn't put his finger on what it was about Andy. Yeah, sure, he was the age Johnny had been, last Jess had seen him, but Jess hadn't known that for sure and certain till Slim said so. Jess had known kids enough, workin' on Army posts and ranches from Texas to Montana, but never one that he'd took it in mind to start teachin' bottom-dealin' to inside an hour after they'd met.

And Andy was a good kid. Smart, and good-hearted, and for all his forcefully-expressed restlessness and discontent, he loved his big brother—Jess remembered the way he'd run to Slim when he lay tumbled on the floor, crying his name. What must it be like, he wondered, to have family that cared for you like that? It had been so long since he'd had the like, it felt like a distant dream; he could scarcely even recall it, over all that had happened since.

Maybe that was why he kept on stickin' his oar in with Slim about the kid. Wasn't none of his business, he knew that... he understood this was a small family spread and everybody had to pull his weight—he'd done it himself, back when he'd had a home. He understood how Slim had to fight to survive, 'cause he'd had the same obligation; not that Slim confided in him, which didn't offend him, 'cause after all he was just a hired hand, but he'd overheard enough to know that there was a note at the bank that the big man fretted on, and all the natural troubles of raisin' beef besides—rustlers and Indians and water and weather and the dad-gum changeable market. Still, that wasn't no excuse to not be givin' some thought to what was right for the boy you likely knew better'n anybody else alive on the world did. Right for _him_ , not for the picture you had in your head of him. The notion of the two of 'em bein' partners, workin' together to make this place go, wasn't a bad one in itself. But if Andy didn't want it too, he'd never put his heart into the work that would bring the dream alive. It was one thing if the boy made the choice for himself; it was another to have it imposed on him from without. Jess, like most of the Harpers, had never much took to bein' imposed on. No; even a boy had the right to decide for himself who he was and where he might fit in with the big world. He'd be a man a lot more years than he'd been a boy. It wasn't good for him to make the wrong choice. Wrong choices led to bad finishes. Jess knew. He'd experienced it.

It wasn't exactly, Jess thought, that he'd ever made any real effort to set Andy against Slim. He'd never have done that, 'cause he knew how he'd have felt if somebody had tried to set Johnny, or Billy, or Davy against him. It was just, he reckoned, that he'd happened along at exactly the right time, with exactly the right qualifications, to become the focus of all Andy's vague longings. What was it Andy had said, that first day? _"I'm so sick of switching teams for stages I never get to ride on, stages going west, stages going east, wagon trains rolling through. Everybody's on the move but me."_ The hunger had been there long before Jess showed up, and Slim bearin' down the way he did only made it worse.

And yet at the same time Jess also understood that Slim worried about the boy, about the possibility that he'd be seein' Jess as a hero, a glamorous figure that he'd want to imitate. There'd been other parents who'd felt the like; it had been one of the reasons he'd been asked to move on, times.

Only they might've asked, first, whether he'd want it so.

And he wouldn't.

'Cause in spite of what he'd said to Andy that first day, it was all startin' to get pretty old to him.

What had Andy said? _I read in a book once that there's no animal that can't be do-mesticated._

And Jess had jerked a thumb at his own chest and said, _Here's one._

 _Here's another,_ Andy had said, copying the gesture.

 _No,_ Jess thought now. _You stay do-mesticated, Andy. You got no idea what a good thing you got with Slim and Jonesy. You're better here. Believe me—I know._

Ten years.

Long time to be without a place to call your own, without (most of the time) anybody you felt you could count on to have your back, even without bein' asked.

Times he thought, maybe, Slim could be that. Which was maybe why he'd mentioned his... profession... that first night. Maybe why he'd mentioned Johnny, too.

Times he thought he was loco to even let such a notion flit through his mind. Slim was so dang respectable, so honest and stiff-necked upright...

And yet he'd been the one to suggest that Jess come back with him and stay. He'd given Jess a bed in his home, a place at his table. And, sure, he expected hard work, but Jess was no stranger to hard work, and he had to say, if Slim kept the pressure on him, he kept it more on himself.

Times Jess even thought Slim was tryin' to make some allowances for him, like he'd asked Jess to make allowances about Andy. Which was why he'd kept his temper in check them few times it'd started threatenin' to get away from him over somethin' Slim said or did.

Come to that, it was strange the way he'd felt, almost right from the start, that he could trust Slim. More so than 'most anyone he'd known. Sure and certain he'd told the rancher more about himself—little though it was—than he had anybody else he'd rode for, or with, these ten years, exceptin' Dixie, maybe. Trust wasn't a thing Jess gave easy. Trustin' made you vulnerable. It let others see where you could be hurt, and Jess had been hurt far too much in his life to want any more of it.

And seemed like Slim trusted back, 'cause not only had he asked Jess to stay, but he'd talked about Andy—about his restlessness, about never layin' leather on him—and about Jonesy's dream icebox and the piano he longed for. Family things. Why would a man do that, confide in somebody he didn't hardly know? He'd even been first to offer it; that was maybe why Jess had felt... almost safe... tellin' back like he had.

Times he could see Slim was kinda jealous of what he had with Andy. And he understood that, 'cause from what Slim had said, he was near as the boy had had to a father, six years now. Must be rough to have some drifter come blowin' into your nice orderly life and charm the little brother you'd come to see as your responsibility.

What Slim didn't know, and what Jess wasn't about to tell him, was that times he was jealous of Andy too. Jealous that Andy had a home and folks that cared about him. Always had, always would...

Unless...

No, he wasn't gonna go there.

But still...

He remembered that first Sunday, he'd been just ramblin' around the place, he'd come across the graves. Just two of 'em, simple wooden markers like the ones his own family had. _Matt Sherman, 1804-1863. Mary Sherman, 1816-1868._

Slim's folks.

His pa would be, what, sixty-six now, if he'd lived. His ma would be fifty-four. Lots of folks lived to be that old, no reason they couldn't have, if whatever had taken 'em hadn't. Slim had said he took after his pa's side; Jess could picture the old man as bein' a lot like him, tall and strong and straight-shouldered, though maybe, with the mellowness that comes out of years of experience, not quite so stiff and righteous. And Jess knew that most folks fetched up their own families in the same terms as they'd been. That meant Matt Sherman might have been strict with his boys, but he'd have been supportive too. He'd have stood behind them—or beside them—when trouble came.

Slim didn't have nobody to do that, now, 'ceptin' old Jonesy with his bad back and that long old shotgun.

Maybe could use somebody to have his back, and Andy's.

Maybe would have that man's back in turn.

No, he was dreamin'. Things like that didn't happen. Maybe in books, but not for real.

Not to him.

He thought, again, about Johnny. Johnny had been a lot like Andy was now. Wilder, of course; that streak was strong in the Harper blood. Resentful of authority, Pa's, the State of Texas's, the rancher's that they worked shares for. But that same restlessness and discontent, and maybe with better cause; Jess had been thinkin' serious of takin' him off, before... And that same bright, quick mind, eager to learn and know, swift to catch hold of anythin' that was taught to him, though Andy had a heap more book-learnin' than Johnny—or even his big brothers—had ever had the opportunity to get.

He'd have been goin' on twenty-two now, three years younger'n Jess was, if the cholera hadn't taken him. If the wildness and the resentfulness hadn't pushed him into somethin' he couldn't handle.

Would have been a good thing, to have a brother ridin' by his side.

Could have had it, too, if...

… _No._ He wasn't gonna think about it. Bad enough he dreamed about it. Wasn't gonna let it spoil his days the way it did his nights.

He forced his mind away from that quicksand, to that first evening out on the porch, and found himself wondering, not for the first time, where all those words had come from. He'd never been easy with what he called "speechifyin'," nor good at it neither; he was best at brief, pithy pronouncements like he'd given the Judge when the man named himself coward. Yet he'd noticed, now and again over the last ten years or so, that when he was deeply moved or somethin' was real important to him, he could talk with the best of 'em. It had happened the night he'd asked his pa for leave to take Johnny up to Colorado and try lookin' for gold. Had happened on the Bradys' back porch with Francie, the night before he left. Had happened when he'd been with Wolf's people.

And speakin' of Wolf… could it really be true, what he'd said? That Slim had been, somehow, "chosen" to be his brother?

Sure the choosin' hadn't been his. Hadn't been either of theirs. How then? And could Indian dreamin' really work for a white man?

Yet Wolf had seen _somethin',_ there was no doubtin'. _…_ _a tall white man with light hair… like sun coming from behind clouds…_ If that wasn't a true picture of Slim Sherman, Jess didn't know what was.

… _You need only to find him, and your life will be complete._

Such were the thoughts drifting through Jess Harper's mind as he slouched on the buckboard seat next to Jonesy, watching the stage road ribbon out in front of the team, feeling the morning sun warm on his back and shoulders, and hearing Andy's soft humming from the bed where he sat with his legs hanging over the tailgate.

Funny, he hadn't really missed goin' into town. Maybe 'cause he'd had no money to spend there till Slim had put them dozen banknotes in his hand. Sure and certain he'd had no intention of askin' for an advance on his wages, not with knowin' what he did about the situation the place was in; stage-line money came in first of the month, and that wouldn't have been till next week. Maybe 'cause he didn't really know what Laramie had to offer, havin' been chased out of it almost before he rode in.

But it pleased him he'd be able to get that Kansas obligation off the books. Didn't like it, that he had a debt owin'. Hadn't been raised to let such things lay.

Maybe that was why he kept shyin' off from the thought of what might happen, when that thirty-day deal he had with Slim was up.

'Cause might be, came time to renegotiate, Slim wouldn't be willing, on account of Andy. And that would mean Jess would have to go. And—

No. It wasn't a debt, not the usual kind. Just a... a feelin' that the scales weren't balanced. He couldn't get it out of his mind, how they didn't treat him like a hired hand, but like...

 _No._

All he was doin' was dreamin', and tanglin' himself up in things that weren't his business.

Better he did go.

He'd have to stay around, he reckoned, till the last of that reward money came in. Not that he ordinarily cared much about that kind of money, but he knew that if he didn't, Slim would be on his trail, insistin' he take his fair share. And it wouldn't be so bad, to be flush for once.

He wondered how long it might take, for all the rewards to process. Maybe he could stop at the jail and ask. Then... California, maybe, like he'd said. Seemed like it was a place where a lot of folks had made up their minds to make a new start.

Maybe he could do the same.

And yet there was always that one thing he couldn't get out of his head, that moment on the road when Slim had said, _This could lead to something—_

 _Yeah, it sure could,_ Jess had said. _Trouble._

But he couldn't forget the way Slim had smiled, the way it transformed that serious face, the way he'd said, _Why_ _don't we take that chance? Come on, we'll be late for supper!_ —and spurred that chestnut horse of his, that Alamo, wordlessly daring Jess to race, like a kid might. Couldn't forget thinkin', _He might not be so bad, if he'd only let go a little oftener._

He wanted it to be right, wanted it to be what it sometimes seemed it might. Wanted it desperately, he realized. Talk about makin' a new start—wasn't that what Slim had seemed to be offerin'? Even findin' out that he'd named his horse for a Texas shrine had seemed like... what was it called? a good omen.

… _your life will be complete…_

No, better not count on it. Better go. They were too different—raised different, thought different, lived different. Most of all had different notions about Andy. Jess didn't feel he could ever quite be sure what to expect of Slim, and he didn't like that, because in his line of work, surprises had a way of turnin' out fatal.

Ten years. How did you cure yourself of what they'd done to you?

You didn't.

Better go.

Only he wouldn't tell Andy. He'd just wait till his month was up, and draw his time, and slip off during the night.

 _Coward's way,_ said something inside him.

 _/No such a thing,/_ he snapped back at it. / _He'd only cry, if he knew. Like he was close to doin' when he got onto me about friendship./_

 _Think he won't, when he wakes up and finds out you've left?_

 _/No lookout of mine! He's no kin to me. He ain't Johnny even if he does remind me of him./_

 _He could be. Not Johnny, but kin._

 _/That's plumb foolishness./_

 _Reckon so? Maybe you ain't quite as smart as you think you are, Harper._

He locked his teeth together and ignored it. He'd decided, and that was that.

He couldn't take the chance. He couldn't lay his heart open to more savaging. It was a wonder and a marvel he hadn't died inside a long time ago, all the times it had happened.

Maybe he had. Maybe that was why he could think about goin'.

"Almost there," Jonesy announced, and the buckboard plunged into the same belt of evergreens he remembered, descending the switchback trail with the old man using the reins and brake skillfully until they swung out past the livery barn and onto the level.

"Where's a good place to get clothes?" Jess asked him.

"Haberdashery," Jonesy replied. "Oh, you can pick up cheap work duds and such at Benson's, but the stock's better at the other. You're a well-set-up young feller if you _do_ need to put on ten or fifteen pounds. You go there."

Jess chewed on the unfamiliar word. "Where is it?"

"I can show you, Jess," Andy offered eagerly. "Jonesy doesn't need me at the store, do you, Jonesy?"

"Well, I kinda had in mind some penny candy, seein' as Slim put somethin' against the bill last week—"

"Aw, I can eat that any time. Besides, Jess has never really been to Laramie, so maybe he could use a guide. Huh, Jess?"

"A guide... sure. That's just what I do need. Thanks, Andy."

It would give him a chance to be alone with the boy, kind of. Maybe one of the last chances he'd get.

The haberdashery turned out to be the dry-goods store, and Jonesy was right: the selection there, it being a more specialized kind of store, was pretty decent. He bought himself four new shirts—chambray, gray cotton, sateen, and one decent white one for times when he'd need to make a good impression—and a pair of sturdy brown jeans, eight pair of socks, two sets of longjohns; splurged on a couple of good blue-gray 10-4 blankets to improve his bedroll (he'd had the old ones going on five years, and they were starting to get threadbare); got an extra pair of flexible leather gloves—you never knew when they'd catch on something and tear, and a man whose life often depended on the condition of his hands needed to make sure they were protected—and three or four printed bandannas that he liked the pattern of, they wouldn't weigh much. Less than fifteen dollars all told. The clerk wrapped everything up for him in brown paper and string, and was as courteous to him as if he'd been the banker or something. Andy sat on a counter and watched as he made his choices, then showed him around the town. There wasn't much to it, a couple of dozen businesses and less than a hundred houses that ranged from stout log cabins to one rather pretentious small mansion heavy with turrets and balconies and scalloped shingles; Jess supposed at first that it was the banker's, but Andy said no, it belonged to Mr. Elbee, the undertaker. On reflection Jess decided that made sense; an undertaker was one of the few men who never needed fear running out of work.

It wasn't a bad little town, at that. Bigger and nicer than some he'd been in. Doing well enough, clearly, to support some specialists, like the haberdashery. Andy pointed out the Stockmen's Palace, which he said was "the good saloon, the one Slim goes to, when he goes, but he doesn't go often," and Ben Dooley's, "the worst place in town, Slim says." There was even a tobacco store, though it also carried what it listed on its sign as "books, stationery, cheap publications, periodicals, magazines, and newspapers... cheap prints, school and sheet songs, song-books, and illustrated papers." Jess stopped there to replenish his stock of Bull Durham and papers, making sure to lay in a good supply, while Andy leafed through the racks of dime novels. "Slim don't mind you readin' those?" Jess asked in surprise. He knew a lot of people had a pretty low opinion of the cheap, "sensational" books.

"He says when he was in the war the men used to swap things between the armies, and dime novels were one of the things most in demand," Andy replied. "And he saw men buried with their Beadles in their pockets. He says if they were good enough for soldiers who were fightin' for their country and what they believed in, they're good enough for everybody. Besides, he says he don't really care what I read, as long as I'm readin' and likin' it. And anyhow, he says, my pocket-money belongs to me and I can spend it as I want to. He says when a fellow gets to be my age, he's old enough to start learnin' how to budget his money out and make choices about spendin' and savin'."

It was a side of Slim that Jess hadn't seen before. So maybe the big man did give his brother a little wiggle room, here and there. Maybe as Andy got older he'd start loosening the reins still more, like you did on a steep down slope so your horse could pick his way. A boy was, in many ways, just like a green colt. Haul too hard on his bit, you'd sour him or spoil his mouth. Put too much weight on him too soon, or work him too hard, you'd break his wind or founder or lame him. Try fitting a saddle on his back that wasn't right, he'd get chafe and sores. Use him with fear or cruelty and you were like to make an outlaw or a killer out of him. At the same time, if you started him and then turned him out on the range with the job unfinished, that was just as bad. But any horse feared what he didn't understand, and would fight it. The secret lay in helping him to see that he didn't have to be afraid, that he wasn't going to be hurt. There was a balance to be found, and that was why really good horsebreakers were so rare, because that balance was so elusive.

Horses and men, Jess had often thought, weren't all that different from each other.

Maybe he should frame it to Slim in those terms. He knew the rancher often did breaking and training, stage-line horses as well as his own stock. Maybe, if he had it explained that way, he'd get what Jess had been trying all along to make him see.

 _Why trouble yourself? It ain't your business. You ain't stayin'._

At the post office he got two money orders, one for Doc Adams and one for the boardinghouse, and a couple of envelopes. He filled out the forms, addressed and stamped the envelopes, and asked whether they'd get out today. "Well, I don't know," the postmaster said. "There's a stage south around three-thirty, connects with the train to Dodge at Denver. It's only about three, but the stage-line clerk was by here a while ago and picked up the mailbags. Now if you were to walk down to the office, you might still catch 'em before they load everything on, but you don't want to waste time at it."

Jess hadn't realized it was so late. "Much obliged," he said, and, "C'mon, Andy, let's go."

It wasn't till much later that he learned about the currency transfer to Denver that had been scheduled to go out that day, on the theory that, the bank having closed at noon as it customarily did on Saturdays, nobody would expect such a thing. Or that the robbers had quietly brought their horses around behind the building, forced the rear door, and taken the station manager and his clerk by surprise barely five minutes before Jess and Andy walked in the front.

They'd no sooner stepped over the threshold than one of the bandanna-masked trio whirled to cover them. Jess stopped dead in his tracks, eyes scanning the scene—the manager standing by his desk with his hands in the air, the open safe, the clerk stuffing packets of money into a feed sack—and suddenly it seemed like he wasn't seeing one scene, but two. He stared into the Colt that was lined on him, and then he let out one hoarse, harsh scream— _"Johnny, get down!"_ _—_ and moved.

He thrust out his left arm and shoved the boy hard sideways, dropping his paper parcel, at the same time lunging right in a jump-and-roll, his hand blurring down to the weapon at his side, and the room exploded in gunfire. He had a vague confused impression of the man who'd been covering him going down even as his gun spat fire, of a sharp blow somewhere against his side, of the clerk tumbling forward across the counter, shouts, a crash, one robber fleeing in panic for the back door, numbness spreading suddenly along his arm, and then a shock of pain just over his ear and the floor coming up and hitting him. Rolled limply, heard a shrill cry that was half sob— _"Jess!"_ _—_ and felt something warm fling itself across him, and then darkness rolled up over him and there was only peaceful stillness.

 _**SR**_

It was Reed McCaskey's second boy, Henry, who brought Slim the news. He was thirteen, lighter weight than his older brother Joe, but longer-legged and stronger of hand than ten-year-old Marty or seven-year-old Jim, who were still restricted to ponies, or three-year-old David, who barely knew what a saddle was yet: big enough to take his father's full-size Morgan/Thoroughbred cross, the fastest horse the family owned, and head for Sherman Ranch at a high lope. "Mr. Sherman! Mr. Sherman!" he hollered as the copper-maned red chestnut thundered into the yard.

Slim had only just finished rubbing down the team that had come off the afternoon outbound, turning them out with hay and grain and hanging up the harness. He came out of the barn in a hurry, knowing from the stuttering rhythm of the hoofbeats that something urgent was in hand. "Henry?" he said as he recognized the boy. "What is it?"

"Jonesy sent me," Henry told him breathlessly, sliding down out of the saddle. "He says for you to come. There was trouble in town."

"Trouble?" Slim echoed, and then, as an invisible fist squeezed his heart, _"Andy—?"_

"No, sir, Andy's fine," the boy said quickly. "It's that ranchhand of yours, that Jess Harper. He broke up a robbery at the stage office—he's shot—they took him to Doc Hanson's—"

For the first time in three good years, Slim didn't even stop to think about stage schedules and relay horses. He just turned on his heel and headed for the corral to get Alamo.

**SR**

Jonesy had been listening for a fast-coming horse—not a common thing so late on a Saturday afternoon, when just about everyone who planned to come into Laramie at all was already there—and came out on Doc's porch as Slim pulled up at the foot of the slope below, tumbled out of the saddle, and threw his reins to a surprised kid with a barked order to "See to him!" before taking the split-log steps two and three at a time. "Jonesy! Are they—"

"Calm down, Slim," the old man told him. "Andy's okay, he's just scared. Jess, well, he's not dead yet, though he's been shot up some."

Slim stopped, took a deep breath, and silently counted to ten. "Tell me what happened."

"Well, the way I hear it, they went down to the stage office to make sure those money orders of Jess's got on the southbound stage, and walked in on a robbery. Jess shoved Andy to the floor, and after that it got kinda busy. He killed one of 'em, drilled him dead center, and hit another in the right hip and brought him down; third made a run for it, but folks drawn by the shootin' caught him before he could get too far. Chester Gannon's dead—" that was the office clerk; "they think he stopped a stray bullet in the confusion. Reece—" the office manager— "he had the good sense to drop flat, he's okay. They found Jess on the office floor, unconscious and bleedin', with Andy draped across him sobbin' like his heart was gonna break. Boy's in there with him now, I can't get him to leave."

Slim took another breath, a long steadying one. "Take me to them."

Jess lay in the white-painted iron bed in the room behind the examining office; Andy was sitting beside it, his face grimy with tear-tracks, eyes fixed on the wounded man. Jess's stark pallor made his brows and hair look even darker than usual; there was a bandage bound around his head, and the quilt was turned down just far enough for Slim to see that he'd been at least half undressed, which suggested other wounds further down.

Andy looked up at the familiar cadence of his brother's steps. "He saved my life, Slim," he said unsteadily. "He saw what was goin' on and he pushed me down—and then he—there was a gun on us, but he—"

"Take it easy, Andy. Easy." Slim put his hand on the boy's shoulder, trying to comfort him, but his eyes were on the man in the bed.

Doc Hanson came in from the other room, and the rancher turned his attention to him. "How bad?" he asked simply.

"Well, considering all the shooting that went on in a very short time in that confined space, he got off lighter than he deserved," the doctor told him. "One bullet seared his right arm, just above the elbow; that's just a flesh wound, though it bled like fury—flesh wounds often do; that's part of why he's so pale. Shouldn't give him any trouble, all the same; a scar, at worst—I've disinfected it thoroughly, poisoning's the big risk in those cases. Another punched through his left thigh, muscle tissue only, didn't lodge. The one I'm worried about is the crease to his head; he's got a nasty concussion."

Slim didn't even think about what to do. "Can he be moved?"

Hanson hesitated. "I suppose so, if he's well cushioned and you take it easy, but why?"

"Because I want to take him home," Slim replied flatly. "I know you'll do your best for him, Doc, but you've got other patients. We can concentrate just on him." _Andy said it first,_ he thought, _three weeks ago and more. He's 'part of our outfit.' Taking care of him is our responsibility. Our obligation. And he belongs at home, when he's hurt._ It didn't even occur to him how incongruous it was to think of an admitted drifter and the concept of 'home' at the same time. "Jonesy, see if you can round up a couple of good straw ticks somewhere, and a quilt. We'll put him in the buckboard."

**SR**

"Easy, son. Easy. Just keep still, now, till you get your bearings."

He knew that voice, although for the life of him he couldn't immediately put a name with it. What he didn't know was that he was hardly the first concussion patient Jonesy had ever had occasion to deal with, and that his increasing restlessness and the movement of his eyes under his blue-shadowed lids had warned the old man to expect his returning consciousness.

There was pain, and a light somewhere, not bright, but still almost too much for his aching head. He groaned and tried to turn away from it. "Easy..." the voice repeated, and something cool and moist fell softly across his eyes, blocking out the glare. "There—that help any? Listen, I'm gonna lift you up just a little—I need you to drink this water, all right? You understand me, boy?"

"Water...?" he whispered, and heard a relieved sigh just before something supportive slid behind his neck and raised him, and something cool touched his lips. He swallowed reflexively and felt the chill liquid sliding down his throat, felt the ice as it clicked against his teeth. Ice? He remembered something... something about... an icehouse...? "Who... who's there... J-Jonesy...?"

"Yeah." The voice was warmer now, rich with comfort and satisfaction. "You're gonna be all right now. You just rest."

As he was lowered back to his previous position, he found pictures forming in the darkness behind his eyes, shredded, foggy fragments of memory, as his wounded brain began struggling to bring him up to date. His heart lurched. "Andy!"

"Lay still!" Jonesy ordered, hands on his shoulders, pressing down hard. He scarcely needed the command as dizziness threatened to hurl him back into the abyss he had just left. He fell back, gasping. "Andy's okay, Jess—you hear me? He's all right. He's asleep in the other room, though I had to give him a cup of camomile tea before he'd drop off. Don't you worry about him, he's just fine. You're the one we been worried about. You give us a scare, boy." He felt a hand against his forehead. "Yeah, feels like the fever's broke. Listen, now, I got a damp cloth over your eyes, I'm gonna take it off slow. You'll notice the light, it may hurt you some, but I got to have it to see what I'm doin'."

"'Kay..." He winced and squinted as the cloth was removed. Slowly his vision cleared and he made out the old man's creased, shrewd-featured face above him, crowned as always by the brown derby. "You... sleep in that too... do ya, Jonesy?"

"Huh? Oh, my hat!" And Jonesy grinned. "If you can make smart remarks about my hat, I reckon you're gettin' back to normal. You know where you are?"

His eyes roamed slowly about the dimly-lit scene. It took a while, since it wasn't a place he'd had much occasion to enter since he'd come to Sherman Ranch, but he finally realized that it was the little second bedroom behind the big bunkroom. Andy had told him it had originally been Jonesy's room, but since Jonesy had moved in with him and Slim, they kept it primarily for stage passengers wanting to lay over (not that very many did, with only twelve miles to Laramie) or for when one of them was ill or hurt and needed quiet. "Ranch," he murmured, licking his lips.

"That's right. Now keep still. It's Tuesday night, about—" he paused and pulled out his watch— "it's quarter past midnight, or as close as makes no difference. You been slippin' in and out on us three days now, fever and concussion; couldn't hardly keep anythin' down, so you're gonna be pretty weak for a spell, till I can get you fed up. We got to put some weight on you, boy."

"Andy's... okay? You... you're... s-sure?"

"I'm sure, Jess." Jonesy's sinewy hand squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "He's been helpin' me look after you. So's Slim, in between stagecoaches."

"'M I... hurt bad?"

"Not bad. Flesh wound above your right elbow, it's closin' up already. Bullet through your left thigh, just tunnelled through the muscle and come right back out again. That one to your head, that's been our worry."

"Tired..."

"Yeah, you should be. Now that you been conscious, you can sleep and start in really healin'. You lay back and rest. You're safe here. We'll take care of you."

And with those comforting words still echoing in his ears, Jess felt his eyelids drooping, felt the softness of normal, restorative sleep stealing over his exhausted system. He never really knew when he faded out.

**SR**

The next time he opened his eyes, it was Slim sitting beside the bed. "How's the head?" the rancher asked quietly.

"Aches," he said, after taking a moment to assess his condition.

"Yeah, it probably will a few days yet. Doc Hanson was by yesterday to check on you, said he thought you'd be coming back to us pretty soon, but that you'd be needing a lot of rest. Seven to ten days once you were conscious, he said, and nothing that takes concentration or attention."

He sighed. "Won't be... much good for work, I... I don't reckon. Not for... for a while."

"No, not for a while," Slim agreed.

"Yeah... reckon you're gonna have to dock me, bein's I... I won't be able to do what... what you hired me for."

"We'll talk about that later. What I'm concerned about is what you already did."

His heart sank. "I... I'm sorry, Slim. I never... I know he... he wouldn't'a' been... there, in harm's way, if... if he hadn't'a' gone with me... I—"

"Quiet," Slim interrupted firmly, laying two fingers against his lips. "What-if doesn't cut it. He might just as easily have stopped in to say hello to Chester and Mr. Reece; he often does, when he's in town. You couldn't have known about those holdup artists, about what they had in mind. What matters is you were there and you pushed him out of the line of fire. You saved his life, Jess. He knows it, and I know it."

He blinked in confusion. "You... you mean you... ain't mad with me?"

" _No."_ Not loud, but unmistakable in firmness and sincerity. "Not mad. Very, very thankful that you were there with him." A pause, then: "Jess… what you said a few weeks ago…"

"Huh?" The concussion had left Jess's recent memory temporarily spotty and unreliable; he wasn't quite sure he knew what Slim was talking about.

"Your first evening here, when you talked about Andy, how important it was for me to let him be whoever he is." Slim's voice sounded dry and half strangled. "You were right. I see that now. I said I'd think about it, and I've been doing that, but it took what happened in town—I think of what could have happened if you hadn't been there, of what I could have lost, what I'd have missed out on, and—" He stopped, briefly overcome, then went on: "I'm not used to admitting that I'm wrong; it's a bad failing, I guess. And it won't be easy, breaking such a long-standing habit. But I'm going to try."

Jess grinned sleepily and from somewhere dredged up a reply that sounded familiar. "Tryin's what a man does, and keeps doin' till he can't no more. I reckon you'll do okay, Slim. You set your mind on a thing, it's good as done, you're so hard-rock stubborn."

Slim's bright smile broke the seriousness of his face— _like sun coming from behind clouds_ —and he pressed Jess's bare shoulder. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. It helps, having somebody else think I can turn things around."

"Never reckoned you couldn't," said Jess. "Wouldn't'a' brought it up, if I did."

"All the same," said Slim. "Now," he added, "Jonesy made a custard for you; he wasn't sure when you'd wake up, so he thought that would be better than soup or broth that might go cold before you had a chance to eat it. And I've got strict orders to get as much of it down you as I can before you fall asleep again."

**SR**

"Slim?"

"Yeah, Jess, what?"

"You said... that clerk in the stage office, he was killed?"

Slim nodded briefly. "Yeah."

"Tell me about him."

The rancher frowned a bit, puzzled by the request. "Well... he'd been with the line at least as far back as when it came to Laramie, three years ago. More, probably, but I never asked—Reece could tell you. About thirty-five, I'd say. Quiet fellow, more courteous than friendly, I guess would be the way to describe him."

"He have a family?"

"Uh-huh. Wife, three young kids."

"They okay?"

"They're coping. Everybody's been sending food in, the women've been sitting with her, taking her kids so she can rest—you know the way it goes. Company paid for the funeral, since he died in the line of duty. I rode in for it—you wouldn't know; that was Tuesday, you were still out of it."

Jess nodded cautiously—his head still hurt sometimes if he forgot and moved it quickly. It had been just under a week since he'd been shot. "Where do they live?"

Slim tilted his head. "Why do you want to know?"

"I'm a sick man, humor me," Jess retorted, adjusting the light blanket that Jonesy insisted he keep over his shoulders in the cool of the evening. Slim had finally gotten him to sit in one of the porch chairs rather than on the rail; it was obviously homemade, but surprisingly comfortable.

"Well, they rent a little furnished house not far from Doc's place. Two storeys, three bedrooms. Twenty-nine dollars a month."

"Highway robbery," Jess muttered.

"Probably," Slim agreed. "They could get one just as big, and with an acre of ground besides, for a hundred a year, twenty-five every quarter. But that would be bare bones, and they'd need at least six hundred dollars to furnish it. What I hear, they had a house fire just before he was transferred here, and lost most of their stuff. Should've had insurance—it only would've run 'em about three dollars a year on their personal property."

"What are they figurin' to do now?" Jess proceeded.

"I'm not sure," Slim admitted. "I guess Mrs. Gannon will have to find some relative or another to live with. Might have to farm her kids out—a lot of families just can't afford to take on four new mouths all at once."

"Families oughtta stay together."

"You'll have no argument from me. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way."

Jess was silent for a few minutes. "Did them money orders of mine get off?"

"No, we found them in your jacket pocket. I'll take them to the office the next time I go in, so we can be sure they go express."

Silence again. "This Miz Gannon—is there a way she could make her own livin', if she wanted to?"

Slim considered the concept. "Maybe. I've noticed that whenever there's a community supper, or anything like that, she always has some of the best baked goods. She's got a real touch with pastry. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either. Jonesy says the same. So do Mrs. McCaskey and Bill Bates's wife. Fact is, she's been selling pies and bread to her neighbors all along. Twenty cents for a fruit pie, a quarter for mince, five cents for a loaf of bread. If it hadn't been for that, and Gannon doing some freelance bookkeeping on the side, they never could've paid their bills on his eight hundred a year."

Jess nodded thoughtfully. "Heard tell women can make a fine livin' by bakin' up in the mineral camps. Hundred, hundred-fifty dollars on a peak day, if they can bake a hundred pies. 'Course prices are sky-high in them places; wouldn't be as much down here, like you said. She'd need a shed kitchen put on her house, anyways, and a second stove..."

"Or a building on Front Street," Slim supplied. "Rent runs about ten to fifty dollars a month, depending on size. And two stoves, like you said... if she got the New Sunshine with the biggest oven they make, that would be around $118 for both; there was an advertisement in the latest _Frank Leslie's,_ with an engraving, I remember noticing it. Or maybe she could go for a stack of old-fashioned brick ovens; that'd give her a bigger capacity, but it'd be a fair-sized investment, with the masonry. Plus tables, and cabinets, and whatever else. And wood delivery—she'd use it up pretty fast; around here it runs about a dollar and a quarter a cord, because of all the trees on the mountains. She'd need to get a mortgage, probably, though not a big one; no more than five or six hundred dollars all told, I'd guess. Cheapest part would be the general-business license, it's only ten dollars a year."

"How much of that reward money on Carlin we got so far?" Jess asked next.

"A thousand. Five hundred from the Territory of Wyoming, five from the Overland. Another four to come."

"My arithmetic ain't too good," Jess confessed, "and gettin' my brain jounced around in my head twice in three months ain't improved it none. What'll my half come to?"

"Twenty-five hundred. You had two hundred fifty of it already; I'll get you as much again when I can get into town and cash the stage line's check."

"Spent about sixty-five of it for them Kansas bills, and the fees for the money orders, and the stamps," Jess recalled, "and fifteen or so for clothes and tobacco."

"Eighty. Leaves you one-seventy cash in hand, plus two-fifty coming, that's four-twenty. And I _will_ pay you; the regular check came in from the line while you were out of your head, I just have to get it cashed."

"Not worried about that," said Jess. "So… if I got twenty-five hundred due me altogether, that's…"

"A little over two thousand coming, counting your first month's pay. Around twenty-four fifty, allowing for what you spent."

Long silence. Then: "I wanta give that two thousand to Miz Gannon. So's she can keep her kids with her, and move herself into a good house with some ground, and get furniture for it, and start a bakery."

Slim met this with a minute of stunned utter quiet. "I thought you wanted to get a stake. To go to California."

"I can ride the grub line to California," Jess responded carelessly. "How do you reckon I got up here from Kansas, broke as I was after what Morgan done to me? 'Sides, that was just thinkin'. California ain't goin' noplace. It'll wait." He returned to his previous subject. "It's got to be done somehow that she won't know it was me. That she won't know it was bounty money. Some folks get touchy about that."

"Jess—you don't have to..."

"I _want_ to. Likely if Andy and me hadn't come in when we did, if the shootin' hadn't started, she wouldn't be a widow now. And that ain't a what-if, that's plain common sense. Them boys was masked, they wouldn't'a' had no call to kill. Would'a' rather got out without shootin' if they could, so's not to draw attention. Now how about what I said?"

"I could get a draft at the bank," Slim suggested, his tone thoughtful. "I know the man who owns it, he started out a cattleman; he always thought well of Pa, I think he'd listen to the idea. We can figure out a way to make it anonymous, maybe tell her there's been some fund-raising going on behind her back."

"All right. Maybe best make it two of 'em, though, one for say four hundred to keep her goin' till the rest of the money comes, so's she don't move on without knowin'."

Slim nodded. "That would work. I'll leave Jonesy here tomorrow to stay with you, and Andy and I will go into town and I'll see to it. If you're sure."

"I'm sure," Jess agreed firmly.

**SR**

He was waiting on the porch when Slim brought the buckboard in the next afternoon. "Did you do it?" he asked first thing, as the rancher and his brother mounted the step.

Andy's face was wreathed with smiles. "Aw, Jess, you should'a' been there, you should'a' seen! Slim and Mr. Wilson—he owns the bank—they went to the Gannons' house to give her the draft, and she cried, Jess! She even hugged 'em both right around their necks, and Slim turned red—"

"Andy!" the man hissed.

"Well, but you did," Andy reminded him innocently.

Slim cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed. "We told her we were there as representatives of a committee of her neighbors, that the four hundred was earnest money and we had pledges for six more. Which was true. Then Wilson began talking about a bakery, how it was something Laramie doesn't have yet, and what tone it would give the town, and how everybody praises her pastry, and he'd be glad to help her with the business end of things till she got used to keeping books and such..."

"And she sat there with this big teary smile on her face," Andy added, "and her little girl, she's the oldest, started jumpin' up and down and clappin' her hands and sayin' how now she wouldn't have to leave her friends, or her brothers their dog—"

Jess sat back in his chair, a slow, satisfied smile settling on his face. "That's good," he said, in a soft, quiet voice. "That's real fine, Andy." He looked up. "Thanks, Slim."

"I didn't do anything except talk to Wilson," the rancher objected. "It was your idea and your money."

"Not any more. Her money now," said Jess, but his smile didn't change.

**SR**

"Doc wants you to come in next week, let him have a look at you," Slim told him after supper. "I described how you seem, and he said it sounded like you were healing up well, but he still wants to examine you for himself."

Jess thought about that. "Reckon I shouldn't ride till he gives me the go-ahead. Ain't sure my leg's up to it, anyhow. Could Andy maybe drive me one day?"

"I think we could spare him for a half-day or so," Slim agreed.

They were silent for a time, then: "So here you are, just about back where you started."

"Not quite," Jess replied. "I got them new clothes Jonesy was grumblin' about, and plenty of tobacco and papers. And I'll be keepin' out better'n five hundred, that's more'n what Morgan robbed me of. A hundred of it's the most important, bein' the profit from that poker game I was in. The rest I could just as easy have lost if the cards hadn't fallen my way, but that hundred, that was clear."

"I guess you could get a fair distance on two hundred dollars," Slim mused. "Maybe as far as California."

"Maybe."

Silence again. Slim cleared his throat. "You know, summer's the busiest season on a ranch."

"Yeah."

"Could still use an extra hand around here."

"Reckon so."

"Till after the fall roundup, anyhow."

"Uh-huh."

"And the way I see it," Slim went on, "you bought yourself a place here with your blood."

"Wasn't what I had planned."

"I know that." Pause. "Still can't offer you any more than thirty a month and your keep."

Jess shrugged. "Like Jonesy said, what do I got to spend my money on besides tobacco and new socks?" He grinned briefly. "Besides, I got a little bit of a poker stake now—if I need to, I can win some more."

"Honestly," Slim warned firmly.

"Long as the game stays honest," Jess agreed.

"This one here, this will," said Slim.

"Never reckoned otherwise." Pause. "Not sayin' I'll stay forever."

"'Course you're not."

"Just thinkin' you do need somebody to help out around here, like you said. And to back you up, times."

"Back _me_ up?! You're the one who got shot up."

"You're the one jumped into that whole Carlin thing, no thought about the odds, just for your principles."

"That was different."

"How different? They'd gone, you and yours wasn't in no more danger. You didn't no more think about what you was gettin' into than me."

"Maybe I did," Slim suggested, with a sly hint of a smile.

"Meanin' what?"

"You figure it out," the rancher told him. Then: "You didn't have any stake in it. Or in the holdup either. Said yourself, those three wouldn't really have had any call to start shooting."

"Maybe I didn't. Maybe I did."

"Meaning what?"

"You figure it out," Jess threw his own words back at him. And stood up and stretched, cautiously, favoring his healing arm. "Think I'll turn in. Still get tired easy, you know."

"You better not keep saying that once Doc gives you a clean bill of health," Slim warned.

"What do you think I am, lazy or somethin'?" But there was no anger in the tone.

"No. 'Course I don't." Pause. "'Night, Jess."

"'Night, Slim."

-30-


End file.
